I should have pocketed the key left in the front door of the embassy and used it to discover the fate of the Lost Tribes, sneaking in one night to read the minutes from their last meeting.

I should have worn gloves to the Inauguration Ball, where I was criticized for my attire—my hair shirt and sandals, helmet and scabbard.

I should not have kissed the famous chef on both cheeks, praising him for the delicacy with which he fricasseed the entrails of my enemies, nor should I have ordered my father to dump the punch bowl over the archbishop’s head, prompting a mass conversion among movie stars and the media.

I should have insisted that the minister of sport amnesty the deserters fleeing to Istanbul, instead of allowing him to behead the soldiers who had boarded up the windows of my favorite brothel.

I should not have copied the cuckoo’s example, refusing to build my own house, tricking others into raising my offspring, Likewise I should not have forged the names of the dead at Waterloo in order to inherit their political beliefs and taste for carnage.

I should have called for an inquest into my behavior at the polo match, where a large swastika was burned into the grass near my opponents’ goal and no one claimed responsibility for the mysterious deaths of all the horses.

I should not have eavesdropped on the ex-president reciting old speeches to himself in the middle of the night; nor believed that anyone except his wife and bodyguards would heed his renewed calls for aerial bombardment of active volcanoes; nor imagined that his declaration of a permanent state of emergency in the relations between men and women was false.

I should have tuned the choir of orphans condemned to sing for their meals before turning them loose in the streets, removed from their reading lists all revolutionary tracts, and offered them instructions in etiquette.

I should not have sunk the garbage scow patrolling the Atlantic seaboard, nor saved the bandages and needles that washed up along the beach, nor exiled the hemophiliacs afraid of the sun and the sight of blood.

I should have sent out a press release detailing the fortunetelling feats of the Gypsies arriving from Transylvania to monitor our elections, then boiled the drinking water drawn from the Lethe before serving it to the heads of state celebrating the impending triumph of democracy.

I should not have tempted the missionaries along the Amazon to learn so many native languages instead of mastering their sailing skills, nor should I have let their superiors cut down every tree in the rain forest in lieu of passing on the hunting lore entrusted to them by their first hosts—the one-breasted women armed with bows and arrows.

I should have crossed my heart when we tired to patch the hole in the sky, shoveled salt over my shoulder at the sight of the fireball plummeting into the sea, made a wish before the solar wind blew out all the lights.

Christopher Merrill has published six collections of poetry, including Watch Fire, for which he received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; many edited volumes and books of translations; and five works of nonfiction, among them, Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars and Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain. His latest prose book, The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War, chronicles travels in Malaysia, China and Mongolia, and the Middle East. His writings have been translated into nearly forty languages; his journalism appears widely; his honors include a Chevalier from the French government in the Order of Arts and Letters. As director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, Merrill has conducted cultural diplomacy missions to more than fifty countries. He serves on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, and in April 2012 President Obama appointed him to the National Council on the Humanities.